Julio Rosas, a Substack journalist, reported Saturday a unique LGBT-Palestinian hybrid flag appeared at a pro-Palestine demonstration in Brooklyn.
“Someone is waving a Palestine/LGBTQ+ pride combination flag at today’s pro-Palestine rally in Brooklyn,” Rosas noted and captured the flag on video.
Someone is waving a Palestine/LGBTQ+ pride combination flag at today’s pro-Palestine rally in Brooklyn. pic.twitter.com/GG0LEgj23z
— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) October 28, 2023
This was not the only LGBT prop exhibited at the demonstration. “One sign says ‘Queers for a free Palestine’ at the march in Brooklyn,” Rosas reported.
One sign says “Queers for a free Palestine” at the march in Brooklyn. pic.twitter.com/zWhOeftNAO
— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) October 28, 2023
This queer affection for Palestine is rather ironic given the Palestinian Authority and Hamas’s own attitudes toward homosexuality.
The 2005 revised constitution of Palestine observed in Article 4 that Islam is the official religion of Palestine and mandated the principles of Islamic law “shall be a principal source of legislation.” Islamic law has traditionally criminalized the practice of homosexuality, a 2021 United States Commission report observed.
According to Palestinian law, being gay carries with it either a maximum jail sentence of 10 years in the Fatah-controlled West Bank or the death penalty in Hamas-controlled Gaza, The Jerusalem Post reported in 2022. Even in the West Bank, gruesome extrajudicial fates have occurred like the decapitation of a 25-year-old gay man back in Oct. 2022, The Associated Press reported.
A Pew poll in 2013 found that only 4 percent of people in the Palestinian territories thought that homosexuality should be accepted by society.